


Angels of Small Death

by Cradlerobin



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7854712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cradlerobin/pseuds/Cradlerobin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick must step into the mantle of the Bat again amongst the mysterious circumstances of his death. But Damian is 5 years older and Dick is 5 years wiser. Gotham however is 5 years worse for wear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angels of Small Death

**_DICK_ **

"Batman has passed, Master Richard"

Dick had to extend his free arm further to keep his balance on the top of the train car barreling down the tracks. So the exact tenor of Alfred's voice escaped him.

  "Again" Dick didn't bother hiding the exasperation in his voice "is it time travel? or a clone's corpse has surfaced or wait I got it, he's gone deep undercover and decided not to tell anyone again- "

   "No." Dick lost his footing at the sound of Alfred's voice, he barely caught himself in time. Alfred was the epitome of courtesy, even in moments of extreme duress, so for him to be that curt with him, expressed more than actual facts could. 

  "I'll be home in an hour, Alfie"

  "Thank you, sir" Dick listen to his deep lingering sigh before hanging up the phone. Dick could see him now, age and stress slumping Alfred's shoulders for only a moment, then he'd steel himself up to meet the challenge at hand with more resolve than anyone else he knew. 

Dick wasn't sure if he was actually close enough to Gotham to make it back in an hour. Dick wasn't actually sure what he was actually close to right now. He was a little flighty by nature and sometimes he just lost track of Gotham and when he'd been there last.

He swore he meant to make it home more often it's just that certain things didn't allow for that.

He was hitching a ride back to Bludhaven with the Haly's Circus caravan, after helping them out with some sticky business with the law enforcement in Star City. Dick basically just solved the cops case for them to prove Haly's innocence 

Before that he'd gone into space with Donna to help her with some Alien tech gone rogue. He didn't think that he was the most adept person for that job, but Donna had a way of guilting him into doing anything including going on an impromptu space expedition. 

Before that he had gone to Bialya with Roy and the new Outsiders he was building up. He'd been meaning to catch up with Roy anyway and make sure his head was still on straight after finding out he'd been hanging out with the Red Hood along with Starfire. 

Before that it had been the mess with spiral and his own supposed death. There was always a backed up cases to get through, along with new cases coming up, always a friend's call to answer. Always somewhere he could lend a hand, somewhere that wasn't Gotham. Anywhere that wasn't Gotham.

It had been hard to explain that to Damian the first time he left.

At first when Bruce had come back, he left Gotham to the new Batman and Robin, letting them to be local and so he could be a vast and global shadow with pointy ears. But his priorities changed, his goals shifted and he came back to Gotham, to take back the cowl and his Robin. To take Damian. 

And Dick had let him, he was his son after all, Damian deserved a shot at a relationship with Bruce. He would have just gotten in the way of that. 

At least that's what he told Damian after he, 11 at the time, had worn him down past 'because he's Batman'. 

How could he explain to a boy that young the idiosyncrasies that had developed in his and Bruce's relationship. The sort of patterns, habits and beliefs that just meant Bruce and Dick couldn't operate in the same city for longer than a month. 

But Damian was probably what he regretted worst about that necessity. It wasn't the same as with Tim, Tim had been older and so different, so much closer to normal on their scale of things. 

Damian and Bruce fed into each other's destructive tendencies; isolation, overwork, depression. They shut the world out together and then shut each other out too. Dick knew without knowing, but who was he to tell Bruce how to raise his own son. His real son.

Sometimes when Dick was very lonely and sad, he'd imagine that Damian was his own son. That when he'd left Gotham he could have taken him with him. Make him his Flamebird or Nightrobin or whatever else Damian wanted to call himself, so long as he could still be his partner. 

Sometimes he wondered if Damian ever wished the same.

Dick swore he meant to make it home more often it's just that certain things didn't allow for that.

  "How do we know for sure it's him" Dick paced around the examining table in the cave. The body looked like Bruce, but so did many many others. 

  "I was patrolling with him Grayson, unless I have been living with an imposter for the last week, it's Father" Damian scowled, falling behind Dick, a shadow.

Damian had been curt in his explanation of what happened. Efficient, concise and thorough; Bruce would be proud of the report of his own death. 

Batman and Robin entered a burning apartment building with over 100 tenants. Only 20 had exited the building on their own, the rest needed to be rescued. The firemen were working with the bottom floors, but no one from the top floors had appeared on the fire escapes or windows to escape. Batman and Robin rescued 20 people together and were still inside when the building began to come down. They were on a lower level but still too high to jump. Robin shot a grapple gun and swung with his rescue to an adjacent building, just in time to watch the building come down on top of Batman. Robin returned his rescue to ground level and went back to the roof to observe the rubble for Batman's exit. The firemen found nothing and Batman had not exited himself, so when the area was abandoned, Robin searched the debris himself, finding Bruce still in costume with no pulse. 

Although he'd never doubt Damian's honesty with him (on this matter because there are a lot of cases where he would doubt Damian's honesty), Dick didn't buy it. There just had to be something else going on, Batman couldn't be taken out by a building. 

    "DNA?" Dick looked up from the Bruce shaped form on the examination table to ask Alfred.

   "Given our follies with this in the past, I took this opportunity to call Dr. Leslie Thompkins for reinforcements" Alfred was the picture of stoic, but Dick knew an actor acting when he saw one.

  "Good call Alfie. What about the rest of the family?"

   "-tt-"

   "Not now, Damian."

   "After I spoke with you, I called Master Timothy he was unable to answer, but he has been working in Gotham and should be arriving shortly. Ms. Gordon will also be coming soon" Dick nodded at his feet and crossed arms. 

    "Cass?"

    "Black Bat has not been in contact with Batman in a year. Drake and Gordon will know her whereabouts." Damian mirrored Dick's closed body language but kept his head high and haughty. Dick just didn't remember his head actually being that high, Damian could only be 2 or 3 inches shorter than him and the thought terrified him.

     "Batgirl?"

     "Brown has been inactive for the past 2 years. A woman of her age has no business calling herself Batgirl, besides"

Dick pinched the bridge of his nose.  He hadn't

remembered everything being this unstable and undone when he'd left for Bludhaven. Batman Inc had just started up and Bruce had finally accepted that he needed a family to be the Bat. 

Somehow in Dick's absence, his family had scattered with no lines of contact. Bruce had left the pieces behind for Dick to scavenge and try to glue back together. And Bruce clearly hadn't cared how hard those pieces would be to find.

    "Jason?" He almost didn't want to ask, but Jason deserved at least that much. 

Silence answered him.

     "I might know someone, who can at least let him know" Dick spoke mostly to himself.

    "Are you inviting him to the funeral Grayson?" Damian sneered.

    "We don't know that we need one yet, little D" Dick put his arm across his shoulders, to both ease and comfort him. Damian stiffened, arms crossed hard across his chest, teeth clenched. Dick pinched the bridge of his nose.

 

Damian went upstairs shortly after, avoiding Dick's attempts to speak to him further. Dick was going to follow and call it an early night when, Alfred put his hand on his shoulders. 

      "Master Dick, I didn't want to mention this in front of Master Damian but I believe there was something else to tonight's proceedings."

     "Me too Alfie, Damian's just too pessimistic. But I got a good feeling that this isn't Bruce and that he's just laying low somewhere."

     "No, there was something Master Bruce was hiding from Master Damian. After patrol, he would appear to end the night and go to sleep. However he was only ensuring that Master Damian turned in, as soon as Master Bruce was sure he was asleep, he'd go back out on patrol. Sometimes not returning until well into the morning." 

    "So you think he wasn't himself when he got back?" Dick couldn't help the hopeful tone in his voice. 

    "Master Dick I believe he was investigating a case he was worried about involving Master Damian in. He wasn't sleeping to keep him out of the investigation." Alfred stood stock still, and it vaguely reminded Dick of Tim's response to anxiety.

    "Bruce not sleeping, what's new?" When he saw the arch in Alfred's eyebrow, he amended. "How long do you think?" 

     "30 to 40 days, I believe." Alfred's arms didn't move. Dick pinched the bridge of his nose.

  ***

   "We've found residue of some kind of drug but it seems he was ingesting it for a long time and there isn't any residue of poison. It was probably some new vitamin he was trying out that I can't get the chemistry right on. I really can't think of any other sort of test I can perform. They've all come up conclusively as matches; based on the DNA I have on Bruce and the samples you have provided me. I'm so sorry" Leslie turned to him as some sort of makeshift patriarch for the family they'd been able to gather. The cowl felt impossibly heavier on his weighed down shoulders. 

Dick had taken to being Batman again the very next night, after Bruce's disappearance, so that there would be no room for the same kind of speculation that had caused so much trouble during his last disappearance. 

Leslie had been performing all kinds of identification tests on the body in the meantime; while Dick, Damian, Tim and Babs, from her hill on high, searched for Bruce.

And now they gathered again in the cave, with Leslie holding her hands out to him in a helpless gesture. He had no words to say.

     "Thank you ever so, for such quick response, Dr. Thompkins." Alfred thankfully answered for him.

     "I'll give you all some time. I can show myself out" She turned for the stairs back up to the manor proper.

    "Please allow me to walk you out " Alfred followed behind her.

     "I'll come too" Dick's voice sounded weak even to himself

     "I'm so sorry Alfred, please tell me if there's anything I can do." Leslie turned back to him, waiting in the doorway.

     "You're most gracious Dr. Thompkins." He made the slightest bow of his head. Dick stood and watched the proceedings. He tried to say goodbye to Leslie himself, maybe even hug her, but his tongue felt heavy and cottony in his mouth.

Alfred shut the door very softly behind Leslie. Or at least it sounded soft under the rushing in Dick's ears.

Dick followed helplessly behind Alfred as he went to the kitchen, he didn't know what else to do. He watched Alfred put on a kettle of something and prepare a tray with food. He did so with such grace and tranquility that even metal being placed against metal was a hushed whisper. 

So it was easy to hear the gasping sob wrenched out of Dick's lungs. There wasn't enough air for him to breath, and his vision was being obscured by the blur of fresh tears. Alfred was suddenly there, holding him tightly, but he didn't have the strength to hold him back. 

   "It is more than right Master Dick, better now than in a few years as some of you are known to do."

It felt like he was throwing up with his voice and tears. He ran out of breath as quickly as he could catch it, but apparently he was speaking because Alfred responded in turn with his huffing breaths.

     "I'll miss him too, terribly so." Alfred rubbed his back, like a baby being burped. He was too tall to be a baby though, so he had to slump forward and curl in on Alfred's shoulders

    "Nevermind if you are a good Batman. You're a good son and that more than lives up to his legacy." Had Dick asked that aloud? All he could make out of his own voice was gurgling throat noises. God bless Alfred for understanding him always. 

     "The family will survive Master Dick. We may never speak to one another or stay in one place for long, but we can ensure that we will survive, as we always have." Maybe Alfred was just reading every insecurity and doubt Dick had right out of his head. Mind reading could be well within Alfred's ability, what with taking care of someone as verbal as Bruce is. As verbal as Bruce was. 

His throat was sore and his body devoid of any strength; a hollow was carving itself a place in the center of his chest. But at least he could finally lift his arms up to hug Alfred back. 

     "I'm so sorry Alfred, this is really hard for you too and I'm being a selfish baby in the most literal sense possible." Dick couldn't mimic Alfred's soothing back pats, he just held on to Alfred as tight as he could, like a life raft. 

     "Nonsense, Master Dick. I may have lost one son, but I can still take care of the sons I have left." The hole in Dick's chest ebbed at the edges. Though none could replace the others, Dick forgot occasionally that he had an abundance of fathers.

     "Besides what's that phrase we performers love so much" Alfred rubbed soothing circles into his back "The show must go on."

Dick laughed even as the tears kept streaming down his cheeks.


End file.
